Aero Fighters
Aero Fighters, known as Sonic Wings (ソニックウィングス Sonikku~uingusu) in Japan, is a vertically scrolling shooter originally released in arcades in 1992 by Video System and ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1993. It was the first in the Aero Fighters series, and a spiritual successor to the 1991 Turbo Force. Overview The original Sonic Wings is by far the most serious of the six games in the series. Although it does have its light moments, it lacks the wacky characters and silly situations featured in later games, in which the series becomes something of a parody of this first game. Sonic Wings holds the honor of being among the first vertically-scrolling arcade games. The game play consists of a scrolling screen with airplane sprites that shoot at various enemy targets to earn points and avoid being attacked. The artillery power of the player's craft can be increased through power-ups obtained by destroying certain large targets. Each craft also has a different special weapon which can be deployed a limited number of times; extra special weapons can also rarely be obtained from defeating enemies. Finally, extra points are available in the form of "money" left when the player destroys some stationary targets. Eight pilots-- two each from the USA, Japan, Sweden, and England-- have the job of stopping the enemy's attacks around the world and beyond. There is a superficial storyline attached to each character, and each has her/his own reasons for fighting the enemy. Some characters were not playable in any of the following Sonic Wings games, while others appear in every game in the series. Gameplay This game uses basic shooter mechanics. Pressing button 1 fires normal weapons; this can be upgraded by collecting P or the rare F items, though the maximum power level has a hidden ammo count, after which the player will return to the previous power level. Pressing button 2 launches a powerful special attack; uses are limited to how many B items the player has collected (every life starts with two). Some ground enemies will drop score items when destroyed; they appear as the currency of the selected character's nation. By default, players start with three lives, and can acquire one more at 200,000 points. Aero Fighters is famous for its large cast of characters, unheard of in 1992. Each pair of characters represents one of four nations. The two-player sides may only select the four characters given (one for each nation). In a two-player game, only a single nation can be chosen. The game has seven stages divided into two parts. The first three stages are selected randomly from a group of four, with one for each character's nation; however, a character will never go to its nation's stage. The other four stages are fixed. After beating all seven stages, the player sees the character's ending, then play much more difficult versions of those stages, after which the game truly ends. Characters Playable * Bishop, Keith * Hien * Keaton, Blaster * Kowful * Lepus * Mao Mao * Rabio * River-n-White, Lord * Sid Pride, William * Tee-Bee A-10 Bosses * Avro Bomber * Holly Mountain * MiG 31 * New Jersey, The * Osaru * Pandora * Pomornik * Station Core * Super XX * Vazeel Release Video System Co., Ltd. (ビデオシステム株式会社) was a software company that was founded and ran by software designer Koji Furukawa in Kyoto, Japan in December 1984. It was best known for making video game titles for the arcades, though it also made games for other platforms, including the Super NES, Neo-Geo and Nintendo 64. Video System released arcade games throughout Japan and the U.S., such as Tail to Nose, the F1 Grand Prix series, Karate Blazers, Tao Taido, Rabbit Punch (known as Rabio Lepus in Japan), Turbo Force, Super Volleyball, Super Slams (published by Kaneko), and the Aero Fighters series. Although Video System's main headquarters opened in Japan, they eventually opened a U.S. branch office. Sometime in 1992, Video System's''U.S. office changed its name to ''McO'River, Inc., and was given the licensing rights to distribute Aero Fighters arcade machines throughout the United States. Aero Fighters was ported to the Super NES in 1993, first released in Japan. This version is different from the arcade original, but is based heavily on it. It adds Rabio (player 1 side) and Lepus (player 2 side) from Video System's earlier Rabio Lepus as playable characters. The same year, McO'River was supposed to publish 3 Super Famicom ports of arcade games in the U.S. While Video System developed and published numerous titles in Japan, McO'River was only able to publish 2 of them in the U.S.: Hyper V-Ball in June, 1994; and Aero Fighters in November, 1994. While the former is an easy-to-find game, the latter is considered by video game collectors to be one of the rarest games ever released on the Super NES. Reception GamePro gave the Super NES version a negative review, saying the weapons are imaginative but the game suffers from slowdown, mediocre graphics, weak sound effects, and "monotonous" music, concluding "Aero Fighters' action won't stay with you - it's a temporary thrill that eventually retreats to the hanger." Legacy An emulated version of the game was released in 2005 for the PlayStation 2 as part of the Japan-exclusive Oretachi Gēsen Zoku series. Sequels Main articles: Aero Fighters 2, Aero Fighters 3, Sonic Wings Special, and Aero Fighters Assault See also: Psikyo Shin Nakamura, the main designer of Aero Fighters and a number of other Video System games, disliked the company's plan to start developing on the Neo Geo. He wanted to make more vertical games like Aero Fighters, but found it difficult to do so on a horizontal monitor. He and other like-minded employees left to found Psikyo, with the similar Samurai Aces being their first game. McO'River would never publish another title under that name. Back at Video System, meanwhile, other employees teamed up with the remaining Aero Fighters staff to begin work on sequels. Aero Fighters 2 and Aero Fighters 3 were released for the Neo Geo. Sonic Wings Special, a sort of "dream match" game based on the three previous entries, was released for the Sega Saturn and later for the PlayStation. Soon after, Special was reworked for the arcades into Sonic Wings Limited. In 1997, McO'River, Inc. changed its name to Video System U.S.A., Inc. ''A year later, Paradigm Entertainment developed ''Aero Fighters Assault for Video System. Sonic Wings Special and Limited were both made for a vertical monitor like the first game. Similarly, Nakamura would make Strikers 1945 Plus for the Neo Geo a few years later. In popular culture YouTube celebrity and famous author John Green, having coming across the game in the Savannah Airport, mistakenly read the title as "Nerd Fighters" while filming a video post addressing his brother Hank Green on the popular YouTube channel Vlogbrothers on February 17, 2007."Nerdfighters" and "Nerdfighteria" eventually became the collective title of the Vlogbrothers' fan community. On September 2013, he was given an Aero Fighters arcade cabinet as a gift. Development Crew External Links